A Nigerian family is counting the days to a British sentencing hearing, and they are not counting alone. The parents of Oluwatobiloba Akinrinola, a 20-year-old university student, have gone public with a demand that a UK court revisit its guilty verdict. Their son was convicted on June 19, 2026, of robbery and blackmail.
He is now held in a prison in Nottingham. The sentencing is set for July 27.
The stakes are raw. A young man who went to Leicester University in September 2025 to study now faces a prison term in a foreign country. His parents, Mr Aderinkola Akinrinola and Mrs Olayinka Akinrinola, released a statement in Ibadan, Oyo State, on Thursday.
They are not asking for sympathy. They are asking for a second look at the evidence.
Their argument rests on what was not found. No money transfers from victims appeared in their son’s bank records, the parents stated. Investigators did find such transactions in accounts tied to other suspects.
That is a concrete gap in the prosecution’s chain. The family also points to CCTV footage. It did not place Oluwatobiloba at the scene of the alleged robbery.
It showed him arriving at the party, nothing more. The conviction appears to hinge on association.
The parents say their son met a man named Richile Vagnu shortly after starting his first year at Leicester University. They call it an acquaintanceship, not a close friendship. The prosecution, they allege, used that connection to build its case.
The parents counter with a direct claim: some victims testified in court that Oluwatobiloba was not among those who robbed them. Here is what the family says happened.
Their son was at the party where the robbery occurred. He entered a room briefly. He asked what was happening.
He left after making it clear he did not want to be involved. That is the version they are standing on. No stolen money in his accounts.
No clear image of him committing a crime. No victim pointing at him.
A British jury saw it differently. That is the wall the family is up against. A UK verdict carries weight.
Getting a review is not a simple request. It requires grounds, possibly new evidence or a clear legal error.
The family has not said what mechanism they will use. They have only said they want a second look. The timeline is tight.
July 27 is less than a month away. A judge in Nottingham will decide how long Oluwatobiloba stays behind bars. The parents are speaking now, from Ibadan, while their son sits in a UK prison cell.
They are not claiming he was not at the party. They are claiming he was there and walked away.
For a Nigerian family, a conviction abroad is a particular kind of nightmare. Distance, legal costs, unfamiliar systems. The parents have laid out what they see as holes in the case.
The court will have to decide if those holes are big enough to reopen the matter. Right now, the clock is running.
